The Struggle Into Childhood In James Joyce's Eveline

Eveline demonstrates the outcome of a child having lost many loved ones through death or through them leaving her. This causes her to fear change. In the short story "Eveline" James Joyce reveals that the old field symbolizes Eveline 's premature jump into adulthood, the dusty, monotonous house represents her life in the moment and Frank symbolizes a coming change in Eveline 's life, showing Eveline 's deep-rooted fear of change and unwillingness to accept it.
The field represents Eveline and the death of her childhood resulting to an early adulthood. Eveline speaks of the friends and family from her early life spending every evening playing in the field. The field, “in which they used to play every evening with other people 's children,”…show more content…However, Eveline’s jovial childhood is put to an end due to changes in her life that force her to assume a pivotal role in her household. Because she associates the field with her childhood, Eveline feels her childhood is at a complete end when the field is no longer there. Her childhood ended just as the man from Belfast bought the field and built new homes in its place. This represents the responsibility Eveline receives as she is thrust into adulthood. Eveline raises the children left in her home by taking care of their needs and schooling just as a mother would do. She states that her responsibilities create a “hard life” (Joyce). As “The meager pleasures of Eveline 's past are totted up among many evidences of the tedium, fear, unceasing labor, and constrictions of her life, to produce a bleak picture” Eveline’s happiness turns into a memory (French 452). When her mother passed away many things in Eveline’s life…show more content…While Frank and Eveline spend time together their time is described with more vibrant experiences such as her being “elated” while attending a ballad called The Bohemian Girl, she became “pleasantly confused” as he sang a song about a woman loving a sailor, and she found having a courter as to be an “excitement” when she first started seeing him (Joyce). He tells her of the adventures he has and sings to her. Unlike her father pushing away the Italian musicians Frank brings music back into Eveline’s life. Frank brought a new value to her and renews the joyfulness in her life. This is proved when he plans to take her away to start a new life: “[t]he narrative makes clear that the possible trip with him to Buenos Aires, where he claims to have a house, is a metaphor for a new realm of experience that his love promises to open for Eveline” (Ingersoll). Frank is similar to the window in Eveline’s room: he creates a way to rid her life of staleness in the same way the window helps the mustiness of the room. He is providing her with an opportunity for a new life and happiness. aAs she looks out the window at the new homes she thinks of the future she and Frank can have together “for Eveline, Frank can be only a means of escape” (French 453). This helps prove the idea of Frank being like

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In the short story “Eveline” by James Joyce, the first paragraph helps to introduce the theme of not taking the opportunities presented and letting life just go on without enjoying it. In the short story, it states “She was tired.” because she was living her life as she always had; without any real excitement. Instead of getting ready to leave to go somewhere more enjoyable, she was sitting there “watching the evening invade the avenue.” She was doing what she always has:…